- From: Michael Mealling <michael@neonym.net>
- Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 22:51:32 -0400
- To: Tim Bray <tbray@textuality.com>
- Cc: Michael Mealling <michael@neonym.net>, Miles Sabin <miles@milessabin.com>, www-tag@w3.org
On Sun, Aug 04, 2002 at 07:37:33PM -0700, Tim Bray wrote: > Michael Mealling wrote: > >Given any context (belief system) you can say that it 'means' anything > >you want it to mean. The issue is that there are two important sets > >of contexts: one is what the authority that owns/has change control over > >"www.w3.org" says is the context and the other is what others say > >that believe about it. Its the difference between opinion and identity. > >The W3C has the ability to say what "is" while anything said by anyone > >else is merely opinion. The difference is very important. > > How does the W3C go about saying what the resource behind > http://www.w3.org is? In a usefully machine-processable way? The only > thing I see out there is RDF, so you could have an RDF assertion hosted > somewhere at w3.org that says > > http://www.w3.org somePropSpace:isA someValSpace:webSite > > So your argument is that if there's another assertion using the same > property and value space that contradicts this but comes from somewhere > other than w3.org, a reasonable person (and the programs they write) > would tend to place more weight on the version at w3.org. That was the assumption, yes. It matches the real world pretty closely. > This can never be, of course, anything more than a general guiding principle > issued for guidance to humans. If the controlling organization is at > democratic... well, expecting consistency from www.senate.gov/daschle > and www.senate.gov/lott is not going to work. -Tim It has to do with trust and which layer your trusting. If I find an assertion at www.senate.gov/lott about www.senate.gov/lott then I can at least trust that it was made by the entity with the authority to do so. The question about whether or not you trust that authority is at a much higher layer than software. ;-) Personally, I would trust www.house.gov/paul much more than I would www.senate.gov/lott when it came to statements about politics but that's just me... -MM -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Mealling | Vote Libertarian! | urn:pin:1 michael@neonym.net | | http://www.neonym.net
Received on Sunday, 4 August 2002 22:53:21 UTC